I was pleased to notice today that the Red Line dot matrix indicators at South Station now shows the times to arrival, and the destination for the next trains. This was something I first saw on a visit to London in 1975. Those boards have been there for quite a while (and being dot matrix are pretty out of date already), but I only saw it at South Station. At others, they all still seem to say just the time, or a message to tell you a train is approaching. Any idea when it will spread throughout the system?I guess it will be the second half of the century before we see similar indicators at bus stops, as seen at most developed cities outside the US since about the turn of this century. And when they do install, I guess they'll be more dot matrix panels, instead of the more usual flat screen display.

The MBTA will activate long-awaited countdown signs on Wednesday telling riders when the next trains will roll into South Station, the start of a pilot program that could be extended to all 51 Red, Orange, and Blue Line stations by the end of the year.

I was thrilled to read this article yesterday. I am also glad that they are taking their time to get things right. The article discusses how they are viewing surveillance footage of South Station and then fine-tuning the countdown clocks to ensure they actually match up with when the trains arrive. Hopefully they maintain this attention to detail when the rest of the stations receive the countdowns, which, according to the article, will happen in bunches of three at a time until all are finished by the end of 2012.

I noticed yesterday when I went to check it out around lunchtime that screen on the platform did the "next train..." a few seconds (maybe 5) before the screens in between the tracks. I could also not hear the outbound side announcements like i usually can.

SM89 wrote:I noticed yesterday when I went to check it out around lunchtime that screen on the platform did the "next train..." a few seconds (maybe 5) before the screens in between the tracks. I could also not hear the outbound side announcements like i usually can.

Yeah, are they still going to be playing the next train approaching/arriving announcements? This was unclear to me after I read the article. Does anyone know?

SM89 wrote:I noticed yesterday when I went to check it out around lunchtime that screen on the platform did the "next train..." a few seconds (maybe 5) before the screens in between the tracks. I could also not hear the outbound side announcements like i usually can.

Yeah, are they still going to be playing the next train approaching/arriving announcements? This was unclear to me after I read the article. Does anyone know?

The one for the green line used to say "The Green Line is so (messed up) that the MBTA doesn't release live data about it" Now it says "Of course, because it's the Green Line, there's no live data available."

I did not know that there was a G rated version available. I can feel better about recommending that version of the site to some older folk.